Dave wrote:
On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 13:32:55 -0400, "prowler"
Frankly, I don’t understand why we have reached PS10 and PS still doesn’t have an equivalent tool. At least four of their competitors have demonstrated that it’s really not that bloody difficult to implement.
prowler
Maybe we should keep in mind that PS (despite facilities like said brushes) is still basically a Photo Editor and does not really have competitors.
OK, here I’ll have to give one/take one (kinda like getting on I-75 in Atlanta). Granted, PS has no real serious competition as a photo editor. However, Adobe long ago realized that the other players in the graphics editing field (which is probably the phrase I should have used rather than "competition") were going to steal a march on them, and conveivably offer real competition that would threaten their undisputed leadership in the field, if they didn’t add features that the others offered that were not, strictly speaking, photo editing capabilities.
The premier example, of course, is text editing. In an application designed specifically and principally as a photo editor there is neither need nor expectation that text even be considered. If your objective is to edit and, theoretically, improve upon photographic images, there is no requirement that text be part of the equation. Being an old fart, I can recall when PS didn’t even have in-place text editing. IIRC, version 5 or 5.5 still invoked a text-editing dialog when the text tool was chosen. Version 6 was the first in which it was possible to edit text in place, and even then the text editing capabilities were pretty lame compared to the compe… er, the other players in the field. And ever since then, it seems that each new version has strengthened PS’s capability in this regard.
It doesn’t take too much perusal of the PS interface to discover a great many capabilities, besides the brushes you acknowledge and the text I mentioned, which have nothing to do with the basic function of editing a photograph (several of the in-built filter set come to mind), but which are there because of their contribution to the objective of creative graphics editing, whether based upon an original photograph or made up whole cloth in the creator’s mind and talent.
I submit that Photoshop is, and has been for some time, a creative tool which has as one of it many capabilities the premier capacity for photographic editing among those which compete with it on that particular field. As such, I believe that it is not unreasonable to ask that the particular creative tool under discussion be part of its repertoire, whether they call it tubes, image lists, nozzles, objects, or whatever name their marketing people come up with.
Photoshop can never be in the same league as
Corel Painter concerning painting,
No doubt, and that might be germane if I had mentioned Corel Painter. However, I did not. I spoke of Corel Photo-Paint, which is and has been a direct competitor, albeit with less than stellar success, to Photoshop as a photo editor. Painter is a purported natural media creative graphics application, and to my knowledge was never intended as a direct competitor to products such as either Photoshop or Photo-Paint.
but PS is not a painting nor a
drawing program. Photoshop is a photo editor without competitors.
As I said, give one/take one. I will readily grant that, with respect to photo editing, Photoshop has no real competition. However, given its strong (and ever growing) vector capabilities, its continued development of text-handling capacity, and the many features which it offers that have nothing to do with photo editing per se (animation, anyone?), I would argue that it is far more than simply a photo editor; it is a tremendously flexible creative tool, and that to omit this really rather simple to implement tool from its repertoire weakens its otherwise unchallengable position at the top of the heap.
Let me put it this way. Why should I have to save an image from PS, bring it into another application to use this tool (I have Photo-Paint, Paint Shop Pro, and RealDRAW [among many others], all of which offer this capacity and support layers), and then bring it back into PS to finish, if that should turn out to be required? Consider the flexibility offered were such a tool to be offered and coupled with the animation capabilities currently available and likely to be developed as a result of the Macromedia (Flash) purchase. C’mon, Adobe. Get off the damned dime and give us the option for full-color dynamic brushes and/or image lists/tubes/nozzles/objects, what-the-hell-ever-you-want-to-call-it, OK?
prowler
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